WHEN ADAMA TALL, A 29-
year-old woman working
as a maid in Dakar, told
her boyfriendshe was pregnant,he
allegedly threatened to beat her and
forced her to take pills and a drink
concocted from green powder. Hours
later, in severe pain, she delivered a
fetus—she doesn’t know if it was
alive—which he took away, saying he
would bury it. When she fell unconscious
the next day, Tall’s mother
brought her to the hospital. There
she remained until well enough to be
transferred to jail—charged with
infanticide. After four years’ detention
in prison, she was found guilty of
abortion—which carries a maximum
penalty of two years—and was then
released.

In Senegal, abortion is illegal except
to save a woman’s life. But doctors,
midwives and traditional healers
perform abortions, as do affected
women themselves“You can’t imagine the number of
abortions that take place in Dakar,”
says one ob-gynwho performs the
procedures on nights and weekends.
“Every day, dozens upon dozens.” He
has a private practice and charges the
equivalent of $375, in a country
where a servant’s monthly salary is
roughly $36.

For the poor, the procedure usually
entails dangerous do-it-yourself
experiments. Women drink teas of
boiled coins, seek injections of drugs
such as acetate and oxytocin, and prepare
cocktails of neem leaves and
malaria drugs. The World Health
Organization estimates 30,000
women die in Africa each year from
unsafe abortion. In Dakar, word on
the street is that surgical abortion can
kill you, and the link between abortion
and fatality defines Senegal’s reproductive
reality.

Those so poor and socially isolated
they cannot or will not access the underground-
abortion loop sometimes
hide their pregnancies and kill the
newborns. Recently, a single mother
of five said she had been raped and
hid her pregnancy for shame. When
she had a stillbirth, she buried it in a
neighborhood cemetery. Her brother
called the police, and she is currently
in jail awaiting trial for infanticide.

Infanticide occupies a prominent
place in public consciousness, serving
as a projection of society’s confusion
about abortion. Women who are
accused of committing infanticide
routinely make headlines; courtrooms
are packed for such trials.
Meanwhile, on any given day, news
of a baby’s corpse found in a local
dumpster travels through Dakar’s
poorest neighborhoods.

In 2006, dozens of women were arrested
for infanticide (which also includes
abortion after 180 days of
pregnancy). But only 23 cases were
deemed solid enough to warrant a
criminal court trial. The women were
jailed, serving four years’ detention
on average, awaiting trial at a special
session for serious crimes held only
once or twice a year.

This deplorable situation persists,
although in November 2005 the
African Union Protocol on the
Rights of Women in Africa went into
effect. In Senegal, as in the other 14
signatory countries, women were
guaranteed the right to legal abortion
for pregnancies resulting from rape
or incest. Nevertheless, it would be
difficult to overstate the gap between
international charters and the reality
on the ground in Dakar. Many people
in Senegal haven’t even heard of the
Protocol, and Senegalese law is still,
as it has been for years, “catching up.”